Social mobility

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social mobility is the degree to which, in a given society, an individual's social status can change throughout the course of his or her life (known as intra-generational mobility), or the degree to which that individual's offspring and subsequent generations move up and down the class system (inter-generational mobility).

An example of a society without social mobility was Hindu society under the caste system. Only with rare exceptions could individuals leave the caste into which they were born, regardless of wealth or merit. Societies which use slavery are an example of low social mobility because, for the enslaved individuals, mobility is practically nonexistent

Official or legally recognized class designations do not exist in modern western democracies and it is considered possible for individuals to move from poverty to wealth or political prominence within one generation. Despite this opportunity for social mobility, recent research suggests that Britain and particularly the United States have less social mobility than the Nordic countries and Canada.[1][2] Comparing the United States to the United Kingdom, there were social mobility of different degrees existing between the two countries during different historical periods. In the late 19th century, the U.S. had much higher social mobility than it in the UK due to the common school movement and open public school system, larger farmer sector, as well as higher geographic mobility in the United States. However, during the 20th century, the difference between the social mobilities of the two countries has decreased partly due to the accretion of income and social inequality developed in the United States in the 20th century.

Well-known examples of social mobility from America include Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton, who were born into working-class families yet achieved high political office in adult life, and Andrew Carnegie, who arrived in the U.S. as a poor immigrant and later became a steel tycoon. An example from another country is Pierre Bérégovoy who started working at the age of 16 as a metal worker and, in the end, became Prime Minister of France.

In the United States in the mid-19th century inequality was low and social mobility was high. In other words, the family background is more predictive of social position today than it was in 1850.

In market societies like the modern United States, class and economic wealth are strongly correlated and, therefore, often conflated. However, in some societies, they are different entities altogether. Usually, though, membership in a high social class provides more opportunities for wealth and political power, and therefore economic fortune is often a lagging indicator of social class. In newly-formed societies with little or no established tradition (such as the American West in the 19th century) the reverse is true: Made wealth precipitates the elite of future generations.

Social mobility is normally discussed as "upward only", but it is a two-sided phenomenon - when there is upward mobility, there is also relative downward mobility. If people can manage a relative upward shift in their social status, they can just as easily move downward relative to others. However, it is possible in a growing economy for there to be greater upward mobility than downward - as has been the case in Western Europe.

[edit] Social Mobility v. Economic Mobility

The ability for an individual to become wealthy out of poverty, does not necessarily indicate that there is social mobility in his or her society. Some societies with low or nonexistent social mobility afford free individuals opportunities to initiate enterprise and amass wealth, but wealth fails to "buy" entry into a higher social class. In feudal Japan and Confucianist China, wealthy merchants occupied the lowest ranks in society (at least in theory). In pre-revolutionary France, a nobleman, however poor, was from the "second estate" of society and thus superior, at least in theory, to a wealthy merchant (from the "third estate").

[edit] External links

• Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America, Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin, The Sutton Trust, April 2005
• UK low in social mobility league, says charity, Matthew Taylor, The Guardian, 25 April 2005 (Guardian Online Newspaper summary of the LSE study sponsored by the Sutton Trust)
• Boushey, Heather (2005). Horatio Alger is Dead, Center for Economic and Policy Research Economics Seminar Series.
• The New York Times offers a graphic about social mobility, overall trends, income elasticity and country by country. European nations such as Denmark and France, are ahead of the US. [3]
• Li Yi. 2005. The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification. University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-3331-5